Warner Bros. Pictures has hired X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Proposal star Ryan Reynolds to play the title role in the anticipated Green Lantern, scheduled for a June 17, 2011 release.

Based on the DC Comics hero, the action-adventure will be directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, GoldenEye) and produced by Donald De Line and Greg Berlanti. Berlanti wrote the script with Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green.

The Hollywood trades say that Reynolds and his camp entered negotiations for the part Friday, after the studio held two rounds of screen tests, along with actors Bradley Cooper and Jared Leto. Justin Timberlake also did a screen test. The studio had holding options on the actors, but, except for Reynolds, those expired Monday. Reynolds' option would have expired end of day Friday.

Production is expected to begin in January.

The "Green Lantern" was created in 1940 by writer Bill Finger and artist Martin Nodell. Introduced in 1959, Hal Jordan is a second-generation test pilot, an ordinary man who was given the power ring and battery (lantern) by a dying alien named Abin Sur. When Abin Sur's spaceship crashed on Earth, the alien used his ring to seek out an individual to take his place as Green Lantern: someone who was "utterly honest and born without fear."

Reynolds recently starred in Fox's "Wolverine," in which he played Wade Wilson/Deadpool. The character is now being developed for a spin-off to which Reynolds is attached. He also played Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity.

The actor will next star in Buried, a dark indie drama that will begin filming shortly in Barcelona with Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes. Reynolds will play a civilian contractor who is kidnapped in Iraq and awakes in a coffin, struggling against time to coordinate a rescue even though he doesn't know where he's buried in the desert.

There is a black green lantern: John Stewart which is who Common wasreportedly going to portray.There is also Guy Gardner & Kyle Rayner (both white)But they decided to go with Hal Jordan's origin instead.

I think Ryan could do a decent job though I would have liked to have seen Bradley Cooperplay Hal & have Ryan play Wally West, maybe even Barry Allen.

Sam Raimi to Direct Warcraft Movie! Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Legendary Pictures announced today that Sam Raimi has signed on to direct the eagerly-anticipated major motion picture based on Blizzard Entertainment's award-winning Warcraft universe. Raimi has, in the course of his career, clearly demonstrated a genius for developing and adapting existing fictional universes for mainstream audiences while staying true to the spirit of the original content.

Raimi directed the "Spider-Man" trilogy, which has broken box-office records around the world and garnered five Academy Award nominations. Known for his imaginative filmmaking style, richly drawn characters and offbeat humor, Raimi wrote and directed the cult classic, The Evil Dead and produced 30 Days Of Night. He most recently wrote and directed the supernatural thriller, Drag Me To Hell.

"At its core, 'Warcraft' is a fantastic, action-packed story," said Raimi. "I am thrilled to work with such a dynamite production team to bring this project to the big screen."

Comic-Con is in full swing at this point, and ComingSoon.net got a surprise interview with Disney's Head of Production Oren Aviv where we talked about the genesis of some of the projects they were showing at the con, though we did have a lot of questions about future Disney plans as well. One of the movies that's still on the forefront of everyone's mind is the fourth installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean." Producer Jerry Bruckheimer told us a few weeks back that they were working on a script, but Aviv and Disney are definitely on board as we learned when we discovered that they have plans to be rolling film on the movie as early as next year.

"We're going to shoot 'Pirates 4' in April and May of next year," Aviv told us during our interview. "We are going to release it hopefully in 2011 is the plan." He said that this time they would only be doing one movie this time that would "hopefully be the first of another trilogy."

"It's important to get the story right and it's important to me to scale it down, because we can't get bigger," Aviv admitted. "The movies have subsequently gotten bigger and bigger and very complicated and they were satisfying on so many levels obviously, but I want to kind of reboot the whole thing and bring it down to its core, its essence, just characters." He agreed that there is a lot of Captain Jack Sparrow's back story that we haven't seen yet without confirming or denying that we might see some of that in the fourth movie. Still no word on whether Gore Verbinski might come back for the fourth movie.

Look for our full interview with Mr. Aviv very soon. It will definitely be of great interest to anyone who is wondering how Disney has been making decisions about some of the movies they've been making and will make in the future.

The Hollywood Reporter says that the Wayans Brothers and Sony are developing a sequel to the 2004 comedy White Chicks, which will see Marlon and Shawn Wayans reprise their roles as sibling FBI agents posing as a pair of white ladies.

Keenen Ivory Wayans is on board to direct the sequel, which all three Wayans are writing. The logline for the new entry is being kept under wraps.

The original grossed almost $70 million domestically from a budget of around $37 million.

Disney to Acquire Marvel for $4 Billion! A huge announcement this morning - Disney is going to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion!

Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.

Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. At closing, the amount of cash and stock will be adjusted if necessary so that the total value of the Disney stock issued as merger consideration based on its trading value at that time is not less than 40% of the total merger consideration.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

Entertainment Weekly broke the news early Wednesday that Marlon Wayans is in advanced talks to play comedy icon Richard Pryor in Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions and Sony Pictures.

The project has been written and will be directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls).

The movie depicts Pryor's controversial brand of comedy and his battle with drugs and is currently budgeted at $20 million. Chris Rock, Pryor's widow Jennifer Lee Pryor and Mark Gordon will also produce.

Weaver Drops Big Ghostbusters 3 Spoilers?We're not sure just how big these possible spoilers for Ghostbusters 3 are, but we wanted to caution readers that they might not want to know the following yet.

In an interview with Channel 4, Avatar star Sigourney Weaver was asked about possibly appearing in Ghostbusters 3.

"I'm afraid to say that it *is* happening, I hope people are excited about that," she said. "I don't know if I'm going to be in it, I have gotten a couple of calls asking 'would you read the script.'"